3 Courtroom Tricks That Work in Everyday Conversations

As an attorney, I've learned a few things about how to communicate with people, especially people that don't agree with me. So today I'm going to give you three top-secret, powerful, simple tools that you can use today instantly to improve your communication. Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher podcast, where I'm on a mission to make your next conversation the one that changes everything. Wherever you're listening right now, I'm just going to ask you to do me a favor, and that is find the button where it says subscribe, like, follow, and click it. It's not a lifelong thing. It's something that helps me a lot, because what it does is it tells wherever you're listening that this is good content, and my promise in exchange is that I'm going to make you a better communicator. Episode after episode, I'm going to be here to make sure that your words have power. So thank you very much. Now before we get into it, I want to tell you about Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth is a longtime sponsor of this podcast for a good reason, because I live in Texas heat. It is humid. It is hot. It can be disgusting. You walk outside, and your shirt immediately sticks to you. But your bed, your bed is your sacred place, and there is nowhere I like to be more than my bed. And what does that mean? Sheets. I love Cozy Earth's bed sheets. They're on my bed right now. It's what we use every single night. We have multiple pair of them. I'm going to encourage you to go to CozyEarth.com slash Jefferson. Use the code Jefferson, and you're going to get 40% off. All right. That's 40% off, and you can do a 100-night risk-free trial of their sheets, so you really have nothing to lose. I want you to go to CozyEarth.com slash Jefferson. Use the code Jefferson for 40% off. Now I know probably you're thinking, hey look, I don't know if this episode is for me, Jefferson. I'm not an attorney. I don't know legal things. I don't know how you guys communicate. Get rid of that idea. There are plenty of people that go to law school that aren't good communicators. I mean, that goes in any profession that you can think of. Just because you go to law school does not tie into good communication skills. Now litigation, on the other hand, where you are representing one party, and somebody's representing another, and you are in the courtroom, that's very different. So let me tell you some things that I have learned as an attorney that is going to help you day to day. How can you better communicate and argue like an attorney? You ready? Number one, turn more of your buts into ands. More of your buts into ands. I want you to think right now, wherever you are, maybe you're listening at your office. Maybe you're walking, running. Think about email in particular. We get this kind of framework in sentencing all the time. You say, I like this, or I think this, but. Have you ever had somebody compliment you and kind of draw it out, and you're waiting for the but. Hey, I really like it. I think this is really cool. But it's not for me. It is the separator of many things, and it hurts your dialogue. And as an attorney, I have learned this technique for many years because of depositions. When I'm cross-examining a witness, I want them to be giving the information that I need. And if I start to use the word but, I'm instantly putting up walls between them. It's the same way if you said something, and I go, but, but, what about. See, I'm not even accepting your point of view when you say that. I'm just going, but, but, what about, but him, but he did this, but what about this? What do you think about this? You're putting up walls. So, let me give you some examples of this. Think of, let's say there's somebody who says, yeah, I really like this, but it's not for me. You just deleted everything, but has the tendency of deleting anything that comes before it and builds onto it. This is a very common scenario. I love you, but this isn't working for me. Or, I mean, maybe you're in a relationship right now, and you've been through a breakup, and they say, well, I love you, but it deletes everything. I love you, and I need to tell you this isn't working for me. You hear the difference? You hear the difference in how more assertive that is, how more grounded that is? Here's some other examples. Somebody who goes, I hear what you're saying, but I disagree. Instead, it's, I hear what you're saying, and I see things differently. You hear that? Big difference. Here's another one. I'm sorry I did that, but it wasn't my intent. Remove the but, replace it with an and. I'm sorry I did that, and that wasn't my intent. Now, huge difference. You can already hear that. So start thinking in your emails how you're going to replace that, how you're going to move that, because it's going to increase your communication skills tenfold. And every day for my depositions, I might be asking a witness. I've seen people ask witnesses if I say, they give me an answer, and I say, well, yeah, I hear you say that, but my question is more X, and they immediately clam up. If I were to say, no, I appreciate you telling me that, but what I'm really trying to get at is they clam up, because it goes, oh, what I'm telling you doesn't matter. You don't really want, you don't want what I give. Oh, excuse me. I guess what I just said doesn't matter at all to you. And so it puts up a wall. If you want to level up your communication, listen to me, you need to switch your butts and replace them with ands. I promise you, it is going to be a game-changer for your communication, if you're willing to do it. You're going to start catching it all the time. It's going to be a lot better for you. Number two, stop arguing over the specific, and start going to the general. Especially when things start to get heated. I get all the time where somebody is saying something to me that I disagree with wholeheartedly, and it's very tempting to start getting into the minutiae of it, and start trying to pick it apart. That doesn't do any good. You know this. Somebody's telling something, let's say your grandmother is telling you how you should be raising your child, or your grandfather is telling you how you should vote, or you're getting into an argument with parents or somebody at the office, and they start talking about specifics. Instead of diving right into it, and going tit-for-tat, and trying to just, it's a back-alley knife fight of just a thousand paper cuts, go to the general. Meaning, instead of thinking micro, I want you to think macro. One of the best tools that has helped me, when I can tell that when I'm talking to a witness, things are starting to get heated, I say, I agree. Hear me out. I don't say, I agree with what you're saying. I say, I agree that's worth the discussion. I agree that's worth talking about. I agree that's a point. I agree that's a way to think about it. You see how instead of just arguing about the little things, which most of the time really don't matter, they really don't, I start agreeing on the overall thing. Let's say you and I disagree over something politically, but I know we're just arguing over the little things. Instead of getting into the minutiae, I might say, yeah, I agree. I agree. We should take care of our, the next generation. I agree. Find things to agree upon. You hear how people say find common ground. I don't necessarily agree with that all the time. What you need to do is find any ground to where you can get above, to where you're, you feel like you're breathing above the argument. And a lot of times that comes from not thinking macro, but thinking macro. I agree that's worth talking about. I agree that's a concern. I agree. That's a fair concern. I don't have to agree with what they said. It's just, I agree. That's a fair concern. And it instantly draws them down. It's a wonderful way of stopping them from getting defensive and it's worked time and time for me in the courtroom and in the depositions. Now, before we keep going, I want to take a second to tell you about Peek. Now, I was born and raised a coffee guy, but over the years, I've grown to love coffee. I've grown to love coffee. I've grown to love coffee. So over the last few years, I've really found a lot of joy in teas. I drink tea at night, in the mornings, on the go. And one of the ones that I have in my daily routine is Peek. That's P-I-Q-U-E. 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It is a 90-day money-back guarantee, so there's no risk. So give it a try. Now, back to the episode. Three, here is something you're going to hear from me a lot because it works. It certainly works in the courtroom. It definitely works in day-to-day that you can use anywhere, anytime. And it's this. If you want to have strength and if you want to have very assertive language, enunciate. Now, I am a good old Texas Southern boy. Sometimes, I'm sure you've noticed, I mumble. I mumble a lot. But if I'm wanting to really get into something and I want somebody to pay attention and understand I mean business and I'm very serious, I will enunciate every word that I say. Because it is making it crisp. It is making it pointed. And it's not just me enunciating. I slow things down. So if I'm asking a witness a question, and if it's very important, I'm not going to just breeze right by it. I'm not going to go real fast. I'm going to slow it down. I might say, Mr. Williams, you did not go to the store. You hear that's a lot more grounded rather than me saying, Mr. Williams, you didn't go to the store, did you? You didn't go. They're going to just take that away. So if you slow it down, it's like you stay in flow in the conversation. You stay in flow. Think of it as if you're pulling some thread or you're opening a jar. You're trying to untie something or you're hooking a fish and it's pulling on you. The tighter you pull, you snap it. So if you try to go really fast when things are getting really hectic and chaotic and tense in your conversation, you yank, you will snap that line and you will lose them for a very long time. But if you breathe and slow down your words and you enunciate and you go with the flow and you draw it out, make the conversation last longer, you're going to add in pauses. You're going to add in silence. You're not working in defensiveness. You're working in wisdom. You're giving time to regulate. So whenever you find and whenever I have ever found a witness to be very adversarial to me and I know they don't like me, I know that has a lot more to do with their emotion and a lot more based on their assumptions of who I am. So when I can slow down, not only do I listen better, they regulate better. And so it is something that I use time and time again. I want you to think of that imagery of whenever you rapid response to something and you get really angry, you rush into the response without thinking through it, you're snapping the line. You're snapping the line. I want you to give with it a little bit and pull it back a little bit. And you can do that by using your breath and slowing things down and drawing out the conversation. See, I told you, it's not that, it's not all that legalese stuff. It's not the henceforth, wherefore, whereas, therein mumbo jumbo. That doesn't mean anything. These are tools that I've picked up as an attorney in the courtroom, in the depositions, you name it, mediation rooms that have helped me improve my communication. And these are tools that can transcend any place that you are. So if you feel like you're getting worked up in the car and you're, you know, with driving with your spouse, draw out the conversation, use more silence. If you find that somebody is arguing with you about something, instead of getting into the minutiae and the details, find things above it that you can agree on. I agree this is worth talking about. Easy to use. And number one, get in the habit, you see how I reversed this, get in the habit of turning your butts into ants. That one to me is the most powerful. That one is the most powerful because you pick it up. Just get, get militant. I mean, get disciplined about finding ways to turn your butts into ants. Because butts put up walls, ants build bridges. So use the one that gets you where you want to go. All right. As always, try that and follow me.